Sep 21, 2015
I’m cleaning up my life
I just deleted 6000 emails from my inbox.
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from Greece
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Greece
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
seen from China
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Algeria
seen from United States
seen from United States
I’m cleaning up my life
I just deleted 6000 emails from my inbox.
First day back in the office after a vacation
Want to receive less email?
New post published on http://emailblog.eu/2014/07/01/want-to-receive-less-email/
Want to receive less email?
Want to receive less email? That was the subject line of an email I recently received from a travel/hotel website called Hotelspecials.nl.
Here’s the full email:
The snippet on top says: ‘do you prefer a bit less?’ Where the CTA below the ‘want to receive less email?’ says ‘Yes please!’.
This is quite unique in the email marketing industry as far as I know. Sure, quite a few companies allow you to change the desired frequency of emails received. For instance once a week or once a month. But this is (one of) the first I received that explicitly stated that you can choose to receive less email.
The CTA leads you to this page:
This landing page for your ‘number to receive’ email settings shows three options:
- Once a week + last minute, which apparently is the default - Once a week - Once every two weeks
The last two options have an asterisk, where the asterisk text says: ‘Important: when you select this option, you won’t receive any last minute offer newsletters anymore.’ Very subtle but clear.
On the left of that screenshot you can see ‘Pauzeren’, which is Pause: you can apparently pause the newsletters, which is a feature not often offered by email sending companies.
I do wonder what the thought was behind this dedicated frequency check email. Hotelspecials.nl did not comment in detail about it when I talked to them about it on Twitter, only that they were happy it was appreciated.
To proactively seek out frequency changes by subscribers can mean that the company either sees little interactivity from the regular frequency of emails (which is roughly 2 times a week, sometimes 3), or that there have been too many unsubscribes because of frequency too high. To stem the tide they may have chosen this option, which puts the subscriber directly in power over the frequency of the newsletter and special offers.
Normally I don’t talk about Dutch email marketing examples here, but this one with the ‘want to receive less email?’ question was quite unique, so I decided to write about it. Have you come across any examples? Tell it through the comments or on Twitter.
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There are 121 questions in our inbox right now. :( I'm sorry if we haven't gotten to your question yet. I'm going to try to answer as many as I can today (since I don't have to work) but there's no way I'm going to get through them all... and I can't answer a lot of them. So Delta Interests, you're in luck today lol.
strengthandelegance
Unsubscribe hassle: prevent it, or get burned
New post published on http://emailblog.eu/2014/04/02/unsubscribe-hassle-prevent-get-burned/
Unsubscribe hassle: prevent it, or get burned
Every person using email (which is about half of the global population) has come across it. An obnoxious unsubscribe hassle. Either a quirky login is required, the unsubscribe page or form is not working, you get multiple unsubscribe options (while you subscribed for only one thing): the list is large and cumbersome.
Remember, when people want to unsubscribe, make it as simple and painless as possible: not an unsubscribe hassle. It’s not a bad thing to try to win them back (sort of), with examples of opt-down (less frequent newsletters) or selecting another channel. In case of the last option, have people connect on Twitter, Facebook or subscribe to an RSS feed.
After all, the people themselves are in control of their inbox. If you feel like you are not, take back that control and be sure you’re able to handle the daily email load.
Back to the unsubscribe. What inspired this post was a post on Reddit, with the animation posted below (click to view the animation in a new window):
Nobody, except maybe for spammers, should be put through such an unsubscribe process. Why hurt your own business and your subscribers by making it awful? It might be one of the last contact moments for a while between a person and your company – why on earth should it be a bad one? How does that help when they talk about your company or products later on to someone else? Imagine them relating to the last experience they had with your company. It might seem to be like such a little thing: unsubscribing from a newsletter. But if it becomes an unsubscribe hassle, it will backfire.
But for them, it could be the definite ending to a relationship with your company, and not a nice one. That’s not helping your word-of-mouth marketing at all, is it?
If you currently have a complicated unsubscribe process, or it is downright impossible to unsubscribe without jumping through several hoops, rethink and reorganize. Just because someone says bye for now, doesn’t mean they won’t come back. Or even better, come back while bringing others. All experiences with your company should be great and lasting, even when it comes to the unsubscribe. Bonus tip: ask people why they are unsubscribing, it could help you (a lot!) in your email marketing endeavours.
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SO MANY REQUESTS GUYS! And I love them all!
Yesterbox: a to-do list from yesterdays inbox
New post published on http://emailblog.eu/2013/05/27/yesterbox-a-todo-list-from-your-inbox/
Yesterbox: a to-do list from yesterdays inbox
Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, has developed a new technique handling email that he calles the Yesterbox technique.
The idea behind Yesterbox is that your inbox content of yesterday will be today’s to-do list. The technique follows 10 rules, which I’ll describe in short below. It sounds like a big change from Atos’ dropping email in favor of other communication techniques.
1. Your “to do” list each day is simply yesterday’s email inbox (hence, “Yesterbox”).
The advantage of this way of working through your email is that you know exactly what your day will look like. Response times are faster than normal, as you would just look at a pile of unanswered mail that needs sorting and handling. Working with yesterdays email means your response would at last be the next day, instead of next month or several months later. People tend to delay handling the more difficult (or work intense) emails, just like Tony Hsieh did before.
2. If it can wait 48 hours without causing harm, then you are not allowed to respond to any emails that come in today, even if it’s a simple one-word reply.
Discipline is the key here. Only emergency or direct response needed emails are allowed to be handled today. Focus on yesterdays email, remember? Also, imho things that have to be done today should be handled by phone or face-to-face, not via email. It’s not a direct channel, it’s a patient channel.
3. When processing yesterday’s inbox, you must process 10 of yesterday’s emails before you’re allowed to look at any emails that are coming in today.
Today doesn’t count, yet. Process 10 emails first (it takes Tony about 30 minutes, apparently) before you look at today’s email. Having that focus on the first 10 of yesterday means you also allow yourself the time and mindset to handle those hard and long emails.
For Outlook users, Tony provides this tip to prevent cheating: collapse the Today group of emails by clicking on the arrow in the header (left of ‘Today’) .
4. Calendaring: reply takes quite a bit of time to complete? Schedule it like a meeting.
Some emails can’t be replied to in a minute. They need research, work, internal judgment and such. Schedule time to handle that email, with the folder it’s been moved to and the subject line in the appointment. This way, you won’t delay handling those long-time emails more than necessary: make time, dedicated.
5. You also need to set a recurring appointment to go through yesterday’s inbox every day.
To make this work well, you need to schedule handling yesterday’s email. This would preferrably done at the beginning of your day. For Yesterbox to work, it might take a full one or two hours (Tony mentions 3, but I guess he receives a high volume of emails).
6. When in your “reward” phase of reading the latest emails from today, you’re only allowed to do the following with today’s emails: delete, file, or forward.
With Yesterbox, efficiency is key. Can it wait? Let it wait. Is it a followup from yesterday’s conversation? Handle it, but only if it allows you to delete yesterday’s email from that conversation (hence, trimming down the volume of yesterday’s email to handle).
7. If you need to refer to an email later
Need a reminder to check up on the status of an email (conversation)? Schedule it in your calendar, with referral to the folder you filed the email in and maybe the person(s) involved in the conversation.
8. If you fall behind and have emails that are older than yesterday’s inbox (yes, it still happens), schedule additional time on your calendar to catch up to emails older than yesterday’s inbox.
Even if this happens, start with yesterday’s inbox first. To handle email that’s even older than yesterday (some people will have to get used to that idea of before yesterday = old): schedule extra time in your calendar to handle it.
9. For emails that can wait (such as videos, non-urgent articles, etc.) and have no real deadline, send those emails to another email address
Have email that’s not really work-related or really ‘patient’ emails? Send them to another address (like your personal one) and delete them. It saves your inbox one email at the time.
10. Put emails that are notes into Evernote and remove them from your inbox.
Quite some emails don’t need a response or an action. Move them as notes into Evernote and delete. Ahhh, another email handled!
So there you go: the ten points regarding the Yesterbox email handling technique. I find it intriguing, and might adopt it myself. Have you already adopted Yesterbox? Would it be something for you? My guess is that not everyone gets a big load of email everyday. But if you do, Yesterbox might just be the trick for you. I wonder how many emails Tony Hsieh gets on average which led him to adopt this technique…
Sources:
LinkedIn: Yesterbox relieving email guilt
Yesterbox
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Email comic: heartbeat vs incoming email
New post published on http://emailblog.eu/2013/05/25/email-comic-heartbeat-vs-incoming-email/
Email comic: heartbeat vs incoming email
Have you been overloaded with email lately? Does your inbox look more like 5,296 unread messages than inbox zero? The patient in the email comic below is a bit confused with the reading on the monitor: he must be used to getting a lot of email!
If you’d be like this patient, it might be time to trim down the daily email volume that is reaching your inbox. Head over to this post which contains some tips on inbox overload management.
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